Double trouble: Where is my Italian husband?

Madam Adisa Sule and her Son

Since she returned from Italy in 1994, life has been anything but fair to Madam Adisa Sule. Her 22-year-old son insists she must produce his Italian father while she is seeking medical assistance to regain sanity. TAIWO ABIODUN captures the challenges the woman in her 40s is grappling with.

Madam Adisa Sule went to Italy as a young and promising lady in search of greener pastures in 1990. She returned four years later with some property, including vehicles, and was able to build two houses. But she has since sold one of the houses while she lives in the other. Things, certainly, are not as rosy as they once were.

She appears now to be of unsound mind, wearing different clothes at the same time. Her speech can also be incoherent. She survives on income from her 10-room bungalow, most of which she lets out while she and her son, Luka, occupies one of them. In front of the building is a small kiosk where she sells provisions.

When our correspondent visited her home at No. 64, Ogunmowola Street, Owo, Ondo State, the kiosk was empty.

“Now, things have changed,” Luka told The Nation amid tears. “Things are not as rosy as before. And these tenants give my mother a hell of problem by not paying their rent regularly, knowing her condition.”

A sojourn in Italy

Recalling her stay in Italy, Madam Sule said: “I am a traveller. I travelled to Italy with the help of one of my aunties. I worked at a place called GDP, where Luka’s father, Jacket, was also working. It is an Italian company where they manufacture vests. I met the man in Torino. I used to go to Milano – I know many places – and spent two years there. I lived with my husband for two years. His name is Jacket. He was a member of the staff of the company where I also worked.

“I remember that if you travelled to Italy then, it meant that God had answered your prayer. Request for it was the in-thing and everybody’s prayer then. I knew one Tunde (surname withheld) from my home town, who used to settle the quarrels I had with my aunties then in Italy.”

The return to Nigeria

Madam Sule recalled her meeting with Jacket, which resulted in pregnancy. According to her, they were lovebirds before she came to Nigeria.

She said: “When I was coming to Nigeria, he followed me to the airport and remained there till the plane was airborne. When I got to Nigeria, we were still communicating. But in-between, something happened and I was no longer hearing from him.

“I wanted to tell him that his baby boy had been delivered. I gave birth to this boy here. We named him after St. Luke in the Bible because his father and I went to church to pray to have him in Italy. But in Owo, they call him Luka (good). After his delivery, calls to his father’s phone were no longer going through. Later, we lost contact. I called the only line he was using then but it was no longer going through for years, even till now.”

Asked what efforts she had made to locate the father of her son, she said she went to many places seeking divine knowledge of her man’s whereabouts without success.

She said: “I searched for the man that impregnated me and I did not see him. I prayed and prayed and prayed to make sure I saw him, but nothing happened. We visited spiritualists, yet no luck.

“I still remember that the father of my baby led me to the airport and he saw me off when I was coming to Nigeria. And the painful aspect of it is that it was not my first time of coming back to Nigeria, for I used to come home to see my property and oversee my projects then. If I had not been coming home, it would have been difficult.”

Corroborating Madam Sule’s claims, her neighbour, a retired schoolmistress who identified herself as Iya Omo Emi, recalled that when Madam Sule returned to Nigeria, she was heavily pregnant.

She said: “We all saw her pregnancy then and it was already big. As at then, there was no cell phone like today. But we had an analog phone we were using, through which she too used to receive telephone calls from her supposed Italian husband. So, she was correct in all her words.

“Later, we did not hear from him again. It is true that she was communicating with her supposed husband.”

The neighbour, however, pleaded that Madam Sule be helped to find her lost partner.

She said: “I am appealing to all Nigerians in Italy, especially through the social and conventional media, that whoever knows anybody in Italy should help in locating her husband. Anybody who knows his address should help in tracing him.

“The mother of this woman created this problem and she is dead now. If she knows the address of the husband, then he can be traced. I am an educated woman. I know what I am saying.”

The good times in Italy

Recalling her stay in Italy, Madam Sule said. “I had been going to Italy since 1990 and had this boy in 1994. While in Italy, I worked with a textiles company. At first, I was working with my aunt, assisting her to sell African foods.”

Asked whether she smoked or did drugs, she said: “I did not smoke Indian hemp while in Italy. But I smoked a cigarette called YES. It was more expensive than the ones sold here.

“I can speak the language, but not fluently. I lived in Pietasanta. They wrote everything in Italian language. I met my man in Torino and came to Nigeria with his pregnancy.”

Asked why she decided to return to Nigeria alone, she said: “I came back home when my colleagues were coming back. I too decided to come back home to see my house. Many came back home after making some money. I came home with a lot of money. I used to book first class seats in the aircraft.”

Son, Luka, speaks

Fair-complexioned Luka was clearly not happy that his mother had not shown him his father and for selling off her three-storey buildings cheaply because she wanted to go back to Italy. The half-caste said the deal was not done in a proper way and his mother was short-changed because of her mental illness.

He said: “I don’t know my father and I cannot trace him. My mother only told me that he is an Italian and that I look like him. But what is the essence of living without knowing my father? I am not threatening her because of the state of her health but I am pleading with her and foreigners as well as Nigerian and international media to help look for my father. How will I at 22 not know my father? Friends make mockery of me that I am an Italian but a bastard.”

The handsome young man said he left secondary school at Junior Secondary School Three (JSS3). He has no means of livelihood, as he is unemployed. He also said he was learning barbing before he jettisoned the idea.

Asked why he failed to complete secondary school, he said: “I have no money and my mother too has no money. If I have a father, I would be in school.”

What irks Luka is his mother’s usual response that since he knows the road to the airport, people would help him find his father if he goes to the airport with his picture.

Asked what hope Luka had of finding his father, Madam Sule said: “What is my problem with him not knowing his father? If he loves his father, he would look for him. Would he tongue-lash his father the way he tongue-lashes me? No way. His father will bring out his pistol and shoot him. He does not respect me, so how will I show him his father who is in Italy? I have showed him his father’s picture. He only needs to go and search for him.

“If he gets to Rome and goes down to Pontosita iro Pinivero, he can easily get his father’s house. I was not as old as him when I lost my father, so what is his problem? My mother died last year, and I was just 16 years when my father died. He should go and look for his father.”

Living together

Living with his mother has been a problem for Luka. He says he cannot continue to stand the sight of men sneaking in the dead of the night to sleep with her.

He said: “Because of her mental state of health, some men who cannot feed themselves come here to have sex with my mother. I cannot stand it. Yet, they can’t give her money.”

The statement annoyed his mother who said he could not stop the men from coming to her. Mother and son live together in one room.

Madam Sule said: “I have four children. This boy (Luka) is the third child. I have a child for an Ekiti man, one for an Owo man and another for a Calabar. This one is for an Italian. If you look at him very well, you will know he looks like a half-caste. I’m married to four men.”

“I attended Ahmadiya Secondary School, Owo and I did not go beyond Form One. For my elementary school, I went to Local Authority Primary School in Okitipupa. When there was no job here, I went to Italy. Many went to Italy to sell wares and in the evening, they go to Asuwada where they do prostitution. But I did not do such a thing. My sister did not allow me to do it at all.

“While in Italy, we were selling foodstuff like African beans, yam and garri. In Italy, we could be 50 in a room.

“I have never seen cocaine in my life. My sister did not allow me to join any bad gang and my Italian husband used to give me money.”

Our correspondent spoke with her elder brother, Mr. Raji Suleiman, who said he would be happy if his half-sister receives medical help. He said he had taken her to some spiritual homes but reasoned that she needs medical attention too.

He said: “My name is Raji Sulaiman. I am a half-brother to the woman. She was not really very close to me. When she came back from Italy, the mother did not allow me to get close to her. Her condition was not like this.

“However, I don’t know more than that. But we would be grateful if anyone can assist. Her siblings did not believe she has a problem. If they knew, they would have taken her to the hospital. They do not believe that something is wrong with her. They say she is harsh. You can take the horse to the brook but you cannot force it to drink water.

“I only know that they were fighting over her property. This boy (Luka) had not listened to me. If he had stayed with me, he could have been better than this.

“He said he wanted to learn barbing, but after spending some time with me, he left.”

On the woman’s condition when she returned from Italy, Sulaiman said: “It is true she came from abroad with a pregnancy. I have thought beyond this. We don’t know her husband’s phone number in Italy and we don’t know his family. Each time I see her son, Luka, I feel sad. Why should a man of this nature not have a father? The mother stayed with me for some time, and she used to sleep soundly until she left here again.”

Asked whether he shared the belief in some quarters that she was ‘called’ home by supernatural means or ‘African power’, the brother disagreed, saying: “I don’t believe she was ‘called’ home by force, for she came with a lot of property. She really assisted her family members. I believe it is an attack, and her destiny.”